Institutional change and productivity growth in China's manufacturing: the microeconomics of knowledge accumulation and "creative restructuring"

4sìreservedThis article investigates the microeconomics underlying the spectacular growth of productivity in China’s manufacturing sector over the period 1998–2007. Underlying the aggregate evidence of such dramatic growth, one observes a large, albeit shrinking, intra-sectoral heterogeneity coupled with an even more important process of learning and knowledge accumulation. A major process of both catching-up and dying out among the least efficient ones occurs. Furthermore, we explore the effect of the characteristics of firms according to the ownership and governance structure upon the productivity distributions, highlighting the importance of the transformation of domestic firms as drivers of technical learning. In essence, China’s fast catching-up process entails more of learning and “creative restructuring” of domestic firms rather than sheer “creative destruction” and even less so a multinational corporation-led drive.mixedYU, XIAODAN; DOSI, Giovanni; Lei, J.; NUVOLARI, ALESSANDROYu, Xiaodan; Dosi, Giovanni; Lei, J.; Nuvolari, Alessandr

Product Service System Innovation in the Smart City

Product service systems (PSS) may usefully form part of the mix of innovations necessary to move society toward more sustainable futures. However, despite such potential, PSS implementation is highly uneven and limited. Drawing on an alternate socio-technical perspective of innovation, this paper provides fresh insights, on among other things the role of context in PSS innovation, to address this issue. Case study research is presented focusing on a use orientated PSS in an urban environment: the Copenhagen city bike scheme. The paper shows that PSS innovation is a situated complex process, shaped by actors and knowledge from other locales. It argues that further research is needed to investigate how actors interests shape PSS innovation. It recommends that institutional spaces should be provided in governance landscapes associated with urban environments to enable legitimate PSS concepts to co-evolve in light of locally articulated sustainability principles and priorities

Institutional change and productivity growth in China's manufacturing: The microeconomics of knowledge accumulation and "creative restructuring"

This article investigates the microeconomics underlying the spectacular growth of productivity in China's manufacturing sector over the period 1998-2007. Underlying the aggregate evidence of such dramatic growth, one observes a large, albeit shrinking, intra-sectoral heterogeneity coupled with an even more important process of learning and knowledge accumulation. A major process of both catching-up and dying out among the least efficient ones occurs. Furthermore, we explore the effect of the characteristics of firms according to the ownership and governance structure upon the productivity distributions, highlighting the importance of the transformation of domestic firms as drivers of technical learning. In essence, China's fast catching-up process entails more of learning and "creative restructuring" of domestic firms rather than sheer "creative destruction" and even less so a multinational corporation-led drive

Some General Regularities of Techno-Economic Evolution

One of the most exciting phenomena of the modern world is the fundamentally homogeneous direction of the overall techno-economic development trajectory in practically all regions of the world. The existing economic systems in different countries are collapsing one after another under the pressure of an expanding industrial culture and are becoming drawn into the international division of labor. Simultaneously, their economic development is influenced by the general regularities of the world techno-economic system, the rhythm of which is set by the industrially developed countries. These general regularities of long-term techno-economic development, invariant under different sociopolitical systems, are the subject of this chapter

Liquidity, technological opportunities, and the stage distribution of venture capital investments

This paper explores the determinants of the stage distribution of European venture capital investments from 1990 to 2011. Consistent with liquidity risk theory, we find that the likelihood of investing in earlier stages increases relative to all private equity investments during liquidity crisis years. While liquidity is the main driver of acquisition investments and, to some extent, of expansion financings, technological opportunities are overall the main driver of early and late stage venture capital investments. In contrast to the dotcom crash, the recent financial crisis negatively affected the relative likelihood of expansion investments, but not of early and late stage investments